Have you noticed that, from a material perspective, its one tragedy after another on the world scene?
At the dawn of the new millennium, millions of people feared Y2K disasters when the clocked ticked midnight on December 31, 1999. Then we had the dotcom bust, the terrorist attacks on September 11th, war in Iraq, SARS, tsunamis, floods, and recently the economic malaise, and now Swine flu.
It helps to get a spiritual perspective to see through these calamities in order to keep one’s sanity!
Life is not about dealing with one catastrophe after another. Life is about moving from one glorious insight into the nature of God to the next.
God is a source of supply for every need humanity faces. Challenges are our opportunity to turn to God and find the supply that meets the need. We do not have to stay stuck in despair and discouragement. We can intelligently deal with any looming trouble and successfully conquer it with God’s help.
I love the words of Hymn 65 in the Christian Science Hymnal by Frances Havergal:
From glory unto glory,
Be this our joyous song;
From glory unto glory,
‘Tis Love that leads us on;
As wider yet and wider,
The rising splendors glow,
What wisdom is revealed to us,
What freedom we may know.
Every time we conquer a fear, we glorify God. Every time we spread comfort and love in our neighborhood, we glorify God. Every time we pray and find peace, we glorify God. We have unlimited opportunities to glorify God everyday.
When we cave to fear and worry, we do not glorify God. Quite the opposite. We contribute to despair.
Choose to glorify God today! Side with God and be a positive light of hope and healing.
Life is not about moving from trouble to trouble, but about moving from one inspired idea to the next.
From glory to glory, may this be our joyous song…
Thank you for this thought. It reminds me of the story of the blind boy in the bible. The disciples asked “Who hath sinned, this boy or his parents that he should be made blind?” (I often insert any human calamity when I work on this thought aka blind, homeless, jobless, lonely, poor, sick, terminal, overweight, argumentative, etc). Jesus response was simple and powerful. “Neither, except that the works of the Lord be made manifest.” And then he healed him.
I work with a young man who is going through some personal turmoil. I have shared with him personal lessons learned through a bitter divorce and custody battle, job loss, the passing of both parents, bankruptcy, etc. Every trial brings a pearl of wisdom and delivers me to a better place in thought. The other day, he told me that I lead a “charmed” life for always coming out on top. I quietly and simply corrected him. Not charmed, but blessed.
I’ve been a Christian Scientist and I’ve had to endure a lot of suffering. Physical problems that were not life-threatening, but painful non-the=less had to be endured, and still has to be endured. Sometimes I wonder if it is right for a person to suffer so much. People think it’s crazy that faith continues despite the suffering and the deaths. Yes, there are healings in the periodicals, but no mention of all the deaths. When a church member no longer appears, we just go on like nothing has happened. Someone told me that I was brainwashed. That no matter what happened, we would find an excuse. No one hsa been able to answer the question that makes any sense: why is there material man? saying there is none,is foolishness becauuse it denies our existence and our present life. We will stick to our faith, and slowly disappear, and everyone will continue to rejoice that all is good.
Jesus answered the question about material man by showing that man is spiritual. It was the spiritual man that triumphed over the grave and saved the human Jesus, and then enabled Jesus to ascend, to leave matter behind.
To the physical senses, matter appears very real. But to spiritual sense, it disappears. And that is the only way you can answer the question, is by going into spiritual sense where a matter sense disappears. In spiritual sense, man is spiritual.
On the other issue of life is good, I find life much more enjoyable and progressive to live out from the basis of worshipping a good God rather than an evil one. A consciousness of evil and fear of evil leads to much suffering. I choose the route of conscious goodness. It’s so much more enjoyable.
Your worship of goodness blesses you too, even though you have struggles. Your faith will pay off in the long run, no doubt about it. Life is eternal. This earthly experience is like a passing shadow in the night compared to eternal spiritual life.
I have come to an understanding through an alegory. We are God’s reflection, made in His image. Imagine looking into a mirror at your reflection. Imagine too that it exists in 2 dimentions where you exist (materially) in 3. Have you ever pondered what the existance of your reflection might be? What kind of life he/she lives inside of the looking glass? How does it live it’s day when it is not gazing back at you?
Consider that as a reflection of the great “I Am”, that we are expressing Love, Mind, kindness, health, all of His qualities. Just as He is the great “I Am”, to too we must “be”. “Be” is a verb. It therefore makes sense that just as God “rests in action” as Mrs Eddy put it, that we too must “be”. We are working, learning, struggleing, succeding, persuing, loveing, etc. This material universe that we are experiencing is no more a reality than the two dimential world of the looking glass is to our reflection. It is, however, the alegorical way that we are now processing the act of “being” and as we grow, we will learn our way out. When we are young, we learn that the sun rises in the east. When we have grown we learn that the earth revolves around the sun and gives the apearence of the sun rising in the east. When we are inclined to go further we learn about gravity and quantum mechanics, and we forget the wide eyed wonder of the child who thinks that if he could just climb the tallest tree that he could touch the sun and the moon. We too may have forgotten what came before for the lessons we are learning now, and after the illusion called death, we will be enlightened more because we are ever “being” just as God has meant us to.